In recent years, there has been a great deal of interest in the development of alternative energy sources, or energy carriers, such as hydrogen. Automobiles and other vehicles that use hydrogen as a fuel source have been developed, but methods for refuelling these vehicles that can compete with gasoline fuelling stations on scale or cost have not yet been developed. Gasoline refuelling methods are very simple and typically only consist of providing gasoline from a tank for storing the gasoline via one or more pumps to the vehicle fuel tank. Hydrogen refuelling, in particular high pressure gaseous hydrogen refuelling, is more complicated. One phenomenon that complicates gaseous hydrogen refuelling is that the temperature in the vehicle tank increases during gaseous hydrogen refuelling. The temperature increase is due to the thermodynamic phenomenon of gas heating once it is converted from a flowing gas to a static gas in the vehicle tank. Generally, the vehicle hydrogen tank is only certified to a maximum of 85° C. To ensure the temperature in the vehicle tank stays below the maximum certified temperature, the gaseous hydrogen is required to cool to approximately −40° C., prior to dispensing it to the vehicle, i.e. in case of the hydrogen is provided at 700 bar.
One option, which has been developed, is to cool or pre-cool the gaseous hydrogen using a refrigeration based heat exchanger system. However, these systems, in particular the refrigeration system, are expensive, have long response times and involve many moving parts making their maintenance intensive. A second approach, which has been suggested, is to use a liquid nitrogen-based cooling. Although, such an approach shortens the response times considerably, it is expensive and introduces an infrastructure problem, related to the delivery and storage of liquid nitrogen at the refuelling station. In addition it is difficult to scale up. A third approach relies on a slow refuelling process that allows the heat to dissipate during the refuelling process. However, this leads to very long refuelling times.
To provide a suitable hydrogen dispensing system, the system must be fast, while being much simpler and cheaper. In addition, the maintenance requirements and energy use must be reduced to make hydrogen fuelling stations a viable alternative to gasoline stations.